One and that’s it.

Several things, right. I’m headed to San Francisco for the weekend, and I know that everything has been quiet here for a while, but here’s some stuff for you:

• I’m taking Usability Leadership, and started blogging my homework. It’s over here: op_log / usability. That’s why there are drawings in my Flickr page, which, incidentally, had an unusually high number of views, which leads me to believe that people would rather see my drawings than my pictures. Makes sense, though, since everyone on earth has a digital camera and shoots everything on earth.
• I finally started working on/finishing up several other projects, including my portfolio and my project for the class I took for London. The latter isn’t done, but it’s going to take a while to get done; I’m working on developing a new website/interface for libraries. Big project, I know.
• James is in the Netherlands now. Somehow, he ended up with a bike that has a drum brake, which I’ve never even seen before. James, how about you take a picture and send it over, huh?
• Shows are coming up, including The Lucksmiths, The Mountain Goats and Architecture in Helsinki. I’m sad I missed M. Ward the other night, but will be following up on these other shows soon. Want to go? Let me know. Also: Sufjan Stevens, coming up with the BQE in November.
• I wrote up 10 or so haiku about London for our school paper. I thought they were pretty funny, but I’m sure some people will not think so.
• Shane recently sent me an article about a fixed gear rider that was struck by a car and died in Seattle. That’s some pretty scary shit right there. The next day I wore my helmet to ride my five minutes to school, and subsequently almost got hit on my way home by a driver that just wasn’t paying any attention. I’m lucky I was. In any case, it’s an issue, so stay safe on your bike, please.

Hey, we’ve been in Brooklyn for a year now! Happy anniversary, New York. It’s been great.

Bonus review for Brooklyn. Brandon didn’t make it here with us, and we usually go here pretty regularly but hadn’t been in a while. The design of this place is great, from the dining furniture and concrete floors to the elegant menu graphics. A few of the small great things about this place I’ve mentioned before: Bosco Chocolate Soda, free refills, good staff. They reworked the menu recently though; I didn’t get a picture of it, I should have, but this is on it now:

That’s called the Ranch Burger, I think. It’s got ranch dressing, obviously, and some fried onion crumbles on top. Non-traditional, but they do a good job with it. The extras don’t overwhelm the flavor of the meat, which is always cooked right here in my experience. Put together, it looked a little like this:

Their most commonly ordered item, the bacon and bleu cheese burger, got dubbed the 67 burger in the menu update, and still wins my favorite burger there, but there’s only so many of those I can have without worrying for my life. Not that this one is all that much better for me, but hey, you gotta have your limits.

Since our first visits, they have fixed their salting problem (and yes, RD, it was a problem). They still look great, though.

Overall, I still think I prefer 67 over all the other burgers we tried over the week B was here — It’s certainly not the cheapest, but it is the best quality and value for the money. It’s also close to home, delicious and consistent. So, quick ranking, from worst to best: Pete’s, BLT Burger, Five Guys, 67 Burger (I don’t know where Southern Sun fits in there — B?).

That’s all the burgers for now. Visiting NYC? Find a burger place and let me know!

Back with a few more:

• Kew Gardens is right in the flight path of Heathrow Airport, so the whole time I was walking around airplanes were flying overhead. I took several shots trying to get the airplane right in the top third of the frame. Everytime I take a picture of an airplane landing, I think of the cover of Heatmiser’s Mic City Sons.
• The thing I like best about Kew is the sight lines. The garden is built so that you can stand at one point of the triangle and see a monument at the end of another. The pagoda stood at the end of the Palm house. Great stuff.
• Apparently, Sharpies only recently made it to the UK. I don’t know if that’s totally bullshit or not, but that’s what the guy at SoHo Square told us when he was trying to get us to take some pens from him and write on some rabbit-like creature in the park as a promotional thing. If that is true: How weird.
• The Oyster card, London’s version of the Metrocard, is quick, efficient, and easy to use. It’s thick, like a credit card, and has a no-contact scanning mechanism, two things that make it better than the Metrocard. That does make me wonder if there’s RFID in them, but for the convenience, I was pretty stoked.
• The Tube posts accurate times at every station! That’s mass transit at its best.
• We drank cask ales every night, mostly at The Fitzroy in Bloomsbury. Their bitter was good, and cost £1.78 for a royal pint. It wasn’t hand pumped, but it’s cheaper than I can get in Brooklyn, which is saying something for London. The Fitzroy is a pub that a bunch of writers used to hang out at, one of which was Virginia Woolf, I think.
• The only thing I’ll say about the conference: Great stuff, for the most part. I was wary that the Open Access people were going to get into a fight with the Traditional Publishing Model people.
• I almost forgot: Most regrettable purchases! I had to buy an ethernet cord at PC World to get Internet in my room, and it ended up costing me £15. Not only do I have about a million of those at home, but I also could have bought one here for half a quarter of the price. I mean, $30 for an ethernet cord is excessive.
• Second place: My new digital camera. The only thing I regret about this, is that I paid double the price for what I could have bought it for in the states. But so it goes — The camera is actually pretty great, and was necessary as I left mine at home (checklists only work if you actually check stuff of them). I spent the first weekend in London without a camera, and I tried to draw stuff I thought was interesting, but then remembered that I am horrible at drawing, nor did I have the time or inclination. I thought about writing about it instead, too, but the sentiment was the same. Too time-consuming!
• I didn’t get a full English breakfast until my last morning there, which is a shame, because I would have been scoping out different places for the best. Ours was good, I just love having such a hearty and savory meal first thing in the morning. Fried bread sounds delightful, but we didn’t find such a place. Instead, our sausage was a little cold in the middle, but everything else was tasty enough.

That’s about it. I’m relying mostly on pictures to remember stuff to talk about, and I’m through them all. I have all of our France pictures to comment on though, and maybe if I remember a thing or two there about London, I’ll interject. So: France, soon!

Doing daily reviews is just asking for boring filler. Lists are perfect for your (my) diminishing attention span.

• I ate a lot of sandwiches, including an egg sandwich on my first day. When I ordered it, I said, “egg salad,” the guy behind the counter said, “How about just egg?” I found £1 sandwiches the next day, and I think I also ended up getting egg, but this time with ham. I don’t know why I was so fascinated with egg while I was there. Now that I think about it, I think it was rather bland.
• (Aside: I just saw a commercial with Mates of State singing on stage, but it was for AT&T — I don’t know what they have to do with wireless)
• I didn’t have one burger my entire time I was in London and France. I had one Friday, though, from Schnack.
• I kept buying stuff and taking pictures of things that I didn’t think I would see in the States, but now that I’m walking around, I keep seeing them. Example: Pim’s orange cookies, Yorkie “Not For Girls” Chocolate.
• We saw some guy called the Lindo Man at the British Museum (which, like all the great museums there, is free). Lindo Man was bashed in the head, garroted, and thrown into a bog. His body was preserved by the bog and you could see the expression on his face and where his head got crushed. It was amazing and grotesque, just the kind of thing you like to see in museums.
• Among several interesting things I learned at Oxford, I learned that JRR Tolkien was the man responsible for revising the words in the “W” section during the first revision of the Oxford English Dictionary. Also, while the term “security blanket” was not coined by Charles Schultz, he is credited with the inspiration for the word.
• I ate Indian food while there, but not as much as I would have liked. It was good, though, which also makes me think that, boy, I love Indian food.
• One night, we met an Irishman that appointed himself our tour guide for London — Specifically Camdentown. He introduced us to roadies and falsely claimed the origin of San Miguel beer was Spain (I’m pretty sure it’s a Filipino beer). He was nice enough, except when he wasn’t, because he had a penchant for messing with people. Still, without him, we wouldn’t have met the Heavy Metal Italian, the Drug-Seeking Brazilian Rock ‘n’ Roller, or the Surfing German Documentary Filmmaker. He also antagonized a Brit by asking him, “Did you just get off of work, or is that a style?” referring to his bright red Sgt. Pepper doorman’s jacket. I heard he was in the circus or some such nonsense. In any case, that guy deserved to be antagonized, anyway. We were invited to a party the next night after our eventful evening at the World’s End. We didn’t go.
• I wrote a postcard to my mom, and it said something like, “They don’t let you walk on the grass at Oxford. Unless you’re Harry Potter, I guess.”
• They have these lawn chairs at Hyde Park that you can sit in, but if you sit in them too long, some guy comes up to you and tells you that you have to pay to sit in them. You don’t really have to pay him, you just have to say that you’re not gonna sit there anymore. I saw a couple of old people get pretty mad when they were asked to pay. They should just bring their own chairs, I think.
• Also about Hyde Park: People love skating there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people on skates. Rollerskates. They put cones up and everything. I wanted to see people dancing on them, sort of like that movie with Nick Cannon. What was that called? Oh, yeah: Roll Bounce.
• We were at 70 Whitehall, the building next door to 10 Downing St., when Tony Blair was on his way out. We saw the changing of the guard from a building within the courtyard, and could see the press and media camped out near where Blair was to exit. When we walked through, we saw people gathering around TVs, watching what was happening right outside the door. It reminded me of all the scenes in the West Wing, when they watch press conferences and everyone flocks to the sound of talking heads. A pretty historic occasion, and we were lucky to be able to watch it happen first-hand.
• At the National Archives, an obviously crazy man was in the cafeteria talking to his soup and crackers. We thought maybe he would deliver us a lecture later.
• Kew Gardens is humongous, and wandering it by myself while it was raining was a fantastic experience. I probably took way too many pictures of plants, but I think that’s okay. I couldn’t have walked it more perfectly, though, alternating sunshine with rain with vast grass fields and greenhouses, respectively.

That’s all for now, I will be back with more!

So, yeah, I got back on Sunday and am still fighting with jet lag, which really isn’t that bad, it’s just that I have a hard time staying awake after 8 or 9, which is a problem since we wanted to see a movie last night, but we both fell asleep. I woke up at 1:30 wide awake (but not really, as I fell right back asleep) and then woke up hi morning a around 6:30 without much effort.

Sorry about not updating; you know how it is. You wake up, and the next thing you know, it’s midnight and you’d rather just go to sleep than blog about it. But there’s lots of pictures! I’ll narrate or drop list-form recaps since that’s the only way I can write anything these days.

I just finished the last day of our conference and thus the end of my course here at University College of London. Oxford seems like a hell of a long time ago now, but it’ll probably be good for me to think about it a little bit at a time to decompress.

Note: I’m actually in France now, I never finished this post, and am not getting close to doing it. And now, wi-fi is going to get even more sparse, so I figured I’d just get this up, as complete as it is going to get for now. More after the jump.
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I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but I harbor a certain amount of embarrassment about having a blog. I never volunteer the information, despite the fact that I do feel more credible for having written in this damn thing since 2001. It’s just that nowadays, it’s akin to admitting you listen to emo.

Days Three and Four here were packed — I started school and sat through a total of 13 Powerpoint presentations in these two days. A few of these were from McMillan Publishing; responsible for Nature journals, who have some of the highest impact numbers in the industry. What are impact numbers? Irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is the abundant amounts of netting at Nature; it looks like what I imagine a dot-com during the boom would look like: Secret meeting spaces, bridges from conference room to conference room, and a decent amount of innovation.

The bulk of the Powerpoints, however, came from BioMed Central, an Open Access publishing company responsible for a good handful of Medical and Science Journals. I won’t bore you with the details and thoughts on that stuff; my library nerdery can be elsewhere.

My allergies have been killing me. I went to itch my eyes at some point during the day and ended up re-breaking my glasses, so I had to buy some superglue. Monday night we had a reception and it’s Sunday now, so it feels like a hell of a long time ago. Several of us got trashed at the reception and probably embarrassed the hell out ourselves and the program in general. I expect nothing less.

We talked to several — all right, two — students from the UCL program, and they were very nice and listened to our drunk ramblings with very little detected indifference.

DP and I continued drinking after the reception at the Carpenter’s Arms — Cask ales everywhere! So good. Amazing! Wow! At what point does such continued exclamation cease being earnest? Ponder that.

Glad to say despite the late night and the ample sauce, we still made it to class on time the next day. Amazing. That’s as much as I can recall about Mon and Tues; Weds was Oxford. Better make that another post.

Sorry for the scarcity as of late, needless to say, it’s been hectic. I got in early Saturday morning and it took me a significant amount of time to get out of the airport and into Central London. I don’t know if that says more about the tube or about the state I was in upon arrival. I actually had a great flight, I just sleep really poorly on the plane. Remarkably, I had an empty seat next to me for the entire flight, and I watched shortened versions (fast-forwarded through a lot) of both Children of Men and Music & Lyrics. Don’t you miss my recounting the boring minutiae like that? I bet you do.

I managed to stay awake on about 2 hours of sleep throughout Saturday, mostly by walking around the city on two separate occasions for 3 hour spans. The first time took me around most of Bloomsbury, and I made the costly decision to drop some poundage on a new camera, because I was a dumbass and left my at home. I’m still trying to figure out how to recoup that money; possibly meaning I try to sell it here in London before I go to France.

My second walk took me down to Covent Garden area, which is close to the Thames, much closer than I even realized, especially since my initial reasoning for heading in that direction was to head to Leicester Square to find the Prince Charles Cinema. Not successful, but enlightening nonetheless.

So, what strikes me? I think the prevalence of bicycles (and everyone wears helmets!) and Smart Cars, is what I notice most on the street. I still look the wrong way when crossing the street, despite what the ground tells me.

Sunday I woke up early, around 8, checked email, and promptly fell back asleep until 11. Didn’t ruin my accomplishment of staving off jet lag from the day previous though, which I’m glad about. I took off to try and get to Hyde Park — I thought there was supposed to be Royal Gun Salute for the Queen’s Birthday (don’t know where I got that idea), but couldn’t find it when I got down there — I don’t even know if it really happened or not. Instead, I stood at Speaker’s Corner listening to whatever anyone had to say. For the most part, it was either about religion or politics. In both cases to which I listened extensively, and when I say “extensive” I mean about 5 to 10 minutes each, I couldn’t stomach much more, they were both. One guy was shouted about Muslims, while a Muslim man in the crowd shouted back. The other guy was an American Muslim, on a chair shouting about Islam, and a guy in the crowd shouting back. It may be just entertainment for everyone there, but I can’t stand that much bile for long.

So I hopped on one of those buses! With no roof! And I rode around on that all day. I stopped for a short while at the Tower of London and walked around. I almost went in, but am too cheap to pay £15 to get in (that’s 30 bucks, folks). Does anyone remember that SNL sketch where the dollar is getting beat up by every other foreign currency? Amy Poehler’s breakthrough role as the American Dollar.

Day Three and Four to come. I have to wake up early tomorrow; heading to Oxford!

Hey, so I’m gonna get on a plane in a little while and go to the UK. If I have wireless in-room, I’ll update a lot. If not, I’ll probably be at the pub. Peace out.

A list for the last two weeks. First, Baltimore:

• I played a lot of Guitar Hero in Baltimore and we tried to watch Tristram Shandy (we all fell asleep, except Harvey, I think).
• Baltimore is an interesting city; Owl and I wondered about it and how it got to be the way it is — Among the highest building vacancy and murder rates in the United States. The following all contributed: Fall of the steel industry, Baltimore’s “Dollar Day” real estate debacle, huge drug trade. I’m sure there’s more, ask Jenna, she was schooling us.
• The snowcones are amazing, not because syrup and ice is anything more than syrup and ice, but because the marshmallow topping is enticing, gruesome, and coma-inducing all at once.
• According to Jenna, the drive-in is one of the most integrated places in the city, and I think that is only one small part about why it is so great (and it is). The other things include the announcer who everyone wishes would shut up, the old trailers they show, the flat-out fantastic snack bar with delicious funnel cake intermission (and cheap!), and the entire experience of watching a film outside, in your car (kind of). We’re going back later this summer, you hear that, Owl, Harvey, and J?!
• Camden Yards is remarkably not integrated, and don’t ask me why. Every other ballpark we’ve been to (Shall we do the list?: Safeco, Edison/Angels, Chavez Ravine, Shea, Citizen’s Bank) have all been a vast sampling of each respective city’s ethnicities. Not so much Camden. It’s anecdotal evidence, sure; maybe I’m just imagining this? Anyone think otherwise?
• Regardless, it’s a pretty great ballpark, but Safeco and Citizen’s Bank still top them. The walk to the park is great, too, they have an alley for vendors, like Safeco, but also, an Alley inside the stadium where grills are just lined up (I think similar to Fenway).
• Last Camden bit: Daniel Cabrera is huge.
• Last Baltimore bit: Jenna is an amazing cook. Mac & Cheese and Pad Frye For-eva!

We also saw Al Gore at the 92nd St. Y before Baltimore:

• The place was tiny, and initially, I thought we were in the second row. I was looking at the map backwards, we were in the second-to-last row. It didn’t matter though, because the place was so small.
• Charlie Rose just doesn’t get it sometimes. Even the old woman sitting next to me thought that. I know, because she said it a few times: “We get it, Charlie. Why don’t you?”
• I wish people would really just leave Gore alone about running. Owl and I talked a lot about how Gore wishes young people wouldn’t feel so jaded about the political process. The irony is, we also agreed that Gore could probably do more by not running in 2008.
• I haven’t even cracked open the book yet, but Gore alluded to a lot of people on the anti-media tip, Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan are who I remember most.
• Gore showed up on The Daily Show the same night we saw him at the Y, and after watching it, initially I felt a little gipped because he repeated a lot of what he said at the Y. I realize now, that it’d be impossible for him to come up with some new insight every time he showed up somewhere.
• He’s still devastatingly intelligent, though. It would not win him a campaign. That says more about our country than it does about him.
• Let me run with that: If he’s trying to elevate the political process by challenging everyone to step up the discussion; and if it works in the way he’s been able to highlight the effects of global warming, then maybe America would feel okay about electing someone that is computer-brain smart.
• Last Gore bit: The good thing about sitting in the back was that we got to get in line for the book signing in a hurry. We didn’t wait long, but also, didn’t really even get to say a word to Mr. Gore. We do, however, have two signed copies of Assault on Reason to show for it.

T-minus 10 days to London. Anyone have any tips for me?